This Day In Texas History - March 30

[joe817]

1751 - San Francisco Xavier de Gigedo Presidio was a Spanish military outpost founded on March 30, 1751, on the south bank of the San Gabriel River (known then as the San Xavier River) to protect and aid the San Xavier missions. The presidio was located about five miles from the present site of Rockdale, Milam County. The garrison remained at the presidio until 1755, when disease and drought forced the soldiers to flee with the missionaries and their neophytes to the San Marcos River. The following year the garrison was reassigned the duty of protecting the San Sabá missions in Lipan Apache territory.

1836 - The Texas Army under General Sam Houston begin two weeks of training at camp "Bernardo" on Groce's Plantation near San Felipe. The town of San Felipe was burned the day before by the Texas Army to prevent the advancing Mexican army from resupplying. Eventually, under threat of the advancing Mexican Army, Houston lead his army eastward, eventually engaging them at San Jacinto. As the Texans are training just on the west side of the River, Santa Anna is at Thompson's Ferry, just a few miles downstream, preparing to cross the Brazos. Rain and a swollen river prevent the Mexican Army from crossing the river and engaging the Texans at San Groce's Plantation. On the 14th, the Texas army will break camp and head for San Jacinto. Leonard Groce, owner of the plantation where the Texans were being trained, was the son of Jared Groce who in 1822 establish the Cotton industry in Texas.

1846 - John Neely Bryan builds a cabin in a clearing. This clearing would eventually become the Courthouse Square in Dallas.

1849 - The Marshall Texas Republican was established by Trenton A. and Frank J. Patillo. The paper is most closely identified with Robert W. Loughery, who became associate editor in July and editor in November, and two years later bought the paper outright. Under his fiery leadership, the Republican became one of the state's most articulate voices for secession, and his editorials were reprinted around the state. Loughery's support played an important role in the election of his fellow townsmen James Pinckney Henderson and Louis T. Wigfall to the United States Senate, and the Republican was among the staunchest supporters of the Confederacy during the war years.

1870 - U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the act that ended Congressional Reconstruction and readmitted Texas to the Union. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Texas had been in turmoil, first under Presidential Reconstruction and then, beginning in 1867 with the passage of the First Reconstruction Act, under Congressional Reconstruction. The latter required that Texas have a constitutional convention, with delegates elected by all male citizens over the age of twenty-one, regardless of race, color, or "previous condition of servitude." The convention was to write a new state constitution that would provide for universal adult male suffrage. When the constitution had been written and the state had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Congress would consider the case for readmission to the Union.

1892 - The first train crossed the Pecos High Bridge near Comstock. The bridge, for many years the highest railroad bridge in North America, replaces a lower bridge located at the mouth of the Pecos, which required a long trip down the canyon called the "Loop Line." In order to eliminate the Loop Line, a high bridge was built in 1892 five miles upstream. Completed on Febuary 20th after only 87 days, it carried the first train and Southern Pacific president C P Huntington, opening this new faster route for the Sunset Limited across the Pecos River. Now travelers and immigrants could travel by train from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean.

1912 - Karl May died in Radebeul, Germany. May's fictional character Old Shatterhand spread Christianity and justice across a romanticized American West while fighting "unscrupulous white men and renegade Indians." The novelist's huge following included such disparate readers as Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Hermann Hesse, and Adolf Hitler. Over sixty million copies of May's works, in thirty languages, helped form the image of Texas and the Wild West in many European minds.

1933 - Tornado's hit Angelina, Nacogdoches and San Augustine counties, killing 10, injuring 56.